The South Wales Argus has shown the strength of good local contacts and excellent reporting skills.

It was early morning when the newsdesk first picked up information that a man had been shot in the stomach by police during an incident the previous evening.

Police were giving out only the barest of details, as were the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which had been called in to investigate.

But by the time the Argus’s first edition hit the streets, the paper featured a front page story with an exclusive photograph of the injured man, who was by this time critically ill in hospital.

The Argus reporting team of Laura Evans and Lizzie Smith had tracked down the man’s brother and discovered that the shot man had featured in the paper last year following the tragic death of his son.

South Wales Argus editor Gerry Keighley said: “We beat all other media on the day with this story. It was a combination of good journalism by our reporters in the field and good luck that we had pictures of the man who was shot.”